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Sunday, December 21, 2008

I "found" these two photos of my son interacting with the Star Wars mural I did this past summer. (See earlier post). He is such a ham. His sister is too. Last night, he was the narrator for the Sunday School Christmas pageant. When the music started, his sister broke out of the pew and RAN up on stage next to Alex and started shaking her hands in the air and stomping her feet. It was such a hoot! I once called him a "drama king". He said, "I prefer Dramatically Gifted". :-)

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Because the 2nd floor is shared, my builder-guy can only do "noisy" work on Fridays when the other tenant is not around. And last Friday we had an inconvenient ice storm, so no work at all. I have noticed that the destruction phase is very impressive and seems to have lots going on. The construction phase, too, is impressive. But then the so-called "finish" phase dwindles to a crawl. I'm getting impatient and the weather is making me pissy too.

I really want to get in there and start making it my own space before I lose all motivation and hibernate instead. I've been working on some parts outside of the studio - but only after working hours. My "neighbor" has office hours and appointments with people sitting in the waiting room, so I don't want to get in their way. I painted the teeny bathroom sky blue. We used to call it the Brady-Bunch Bathroom because of the 70's color scheme and the brown trim and brown pineapple wallpaper! It took three coats of Kilz to cover the pineapples! I painted the ceiling, walls, everything , blue and I plan to add some cloud artwork later.

I had the kitchen door walled over, so that blank space screamed "Mural!" to me. The rest of the waiting room (I prefer "lobby") is decorated (by my neighbor) in typical country style. So I thought I'd make my presence known with a huge purple chalkboard and a golden frame with bees. It is still in progress. I was very excited to discover that, not only does Krylon make brushable chalkboard paint, but they also make "tint-able" chalkboard paint!! So I didn't have to settle for black - I got BeezInk purple. Awesome!

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Maybe I'm a whiner, or maybe I am just a truly introverted person who doesn't enjoy having my personal space invaded for days at a time. Five people (2 kids) holed up in a hotel room is not much fun. YES! I AM grateful that we had a hotel room available to us - with heat and TV and warm showers and a pool. Our house was freezing cold and I felt terrible for the cats. The whiny, ungrateful part of me was devastated that our town's Holiday Shopping Tour was canceled. We've been working on it for half the year and it was going to be awesome. The businesses are trying to pull together to reschedule it for this weekend - I really hope it succeeds. I probably don't need to mention that this time of year is crucial to the survival of our (tiny) business! We have a lot to make up for this year and missing a shopping weekend before Christmas can be devastating. Needless to say, we are working on getting a generator!

And again, I know that tons of people are still suffering heat and power loss, but my son is back in school today. I think his is the only school open in the state! But his school play was cancelled last week because of the storm and supposedly there is no make-up performance. How cruel is that?! These kids rehearsed like crazy and... nothing. There's got to be something that can be done.

Isn't it weird how your priorities change? And it's painful to be faced with how dependent we are on electricity too. As if there isn't already enough built-in stress to this time of year! Now we have all these other - important- things to worry about too. I think I'm feeling very "bah-humbug-y", but it seems like, even if I wanted to do something Merry and Giving, that people only want cash or brand new toys. I don't feel very useful or Joyful. I just want to crawl into bed. I'd love to hear how others (introverts, especially!) salvage this time of year - or even how to make it wonderful. I mean it! I'd really like to at least TRY!

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Another blog!? I guess the title is appropriate for many reasons - namely - I must be crazy!Actually, I'm trying to convert the old classroom, upstairs above Wingdoodle, my shop, into a new studio space. Yes, I have an old studio space and I intend to keep using it, but with an 11 yo and a 2 yo constantly traipsing through there, I need a space that is off-limits and dedicated to working. I also have been imagining that if I could leave the house to "go to work" I might get more done. Well, it's an experiment anyway!

So there were actually two large parts to this plan. The first part was to turn the front corner of the store - what we refer to as the gallery-corner, into a... gallery. More of a showroom, really, for my work - the stuff I plan to make upstairs in the new studio. Stained glass, painted furniture, etc. The second part is to convert the upstairs space into the studio. SO! I have finished the first part. I had flat trees built to create a stage set feel and hung some green drapes too. I painted the walls bright blue, gold and bronze and put all my art in there.

I think my baby girl is a balloon head! She celebrated her 2nd birthday this past weekend and the best part of the party (for her) was the "forest" of balloons. Twenty-four blue balloons with long spirally tails floating around the dining room. It was like the scene from "Ice Age" where the squirrel finally gets to heaven and it's paved with acorns... balloooooons! By the next day they were down on the floor and trailing after her like puppies. Today (yes, they are still here!) they look a bit more like raisins and I think they are starting to scare her. Tonight they will magically disappear.

Her dress (from Hanna Anderson - they had a great sale a few weeks ago!) well, it looks like a Hostess cupcake! My husband decorated the cake and cupcakes to match. Yep, that's right, my husband. He made all the other food too. Of course, he waited until the morning of the party to even START cooking and then forgot to buy eggs. But if he had actually planned ahead, then he'd be perfect, and who wants a perfect husband, right? ;-)

Any perfect mommies who stumbled upon this post hoping to find great toddler party tips should back away now! I think we broke all the rules on this one. We had an evening party. All the kids were older than Lilah, and there were tons of people with no kids at all. My 11 year old was in charge of entertainment which included a frantic "treasure hunt" covering the entire house (but NOT my studio - I said "no!") and piano bashing (we recently got an out of tune piano through FreeCycle). The birthday girl, and her mom wore black, (it did have a very sweet puffball fringe!) And the color scheme had no pink at all (blue and silver with a few black penguins). The "treasure" party-favors were really cool little collectible "blind-box" toys from Kid Robot that had interchange-able body sections so the kids could actually trade parts. They are called "Critter Splitters". Then my son went around offering everyone, adults included, giant, striped chenille stems (pipe cleaners). I was surprised that many adults accepted them, and even requested certain colors, and stood stroking them as they chatted. They are very silky and fun to twist. Good for us introverted, nervous types, too. But it made for a strange scene - grown-ups (in a balloon forest) with stripey giant pipe cleaners in one hand and a beer in the other. (oh... you're not supposed to serve beer at a toddler party? oops.) Don't believe me? Here's my own dad making a tiger. Yes, it IS a tiger, he even followed the instructions on the packaging!